Behind the Eyes of the Tigress

Decades after a stranger captured her "tigress eyes," Pappu Devi still sits by her stall, selling the photograph that once made her famous

- By KANIKA GAHLAUT

At a small pavement stall in Pushkar, packs of postcards are neatly laid out beside handmade Banjara-style bags.

The woman selling them, Pappu Devi, looks away when asked about the photograph on the postcards: It's her own, taken more than 20 years ago. Back then, she was a street seller, when a photographer at the fair stopped to capture what was called her 'tigress eyes'. The image travelled beyond Pushkar, finding its way to postcard racks across India.